> > > Would you like to see boot messages?
> > No. I won't buy shitty cards designed for Windows 98. Just the same as I won't
> > buy a GUI printer or WinModem. You will? They you'll be sorry.
>
> Then you won't have a PC fairly soon. Nobody needs text mode, people are
> starting to emulate it by default and Linux has a fine frame buffer console
> without KGI/GGI getting much involved. If you want to support Japanese on
> the console I suspect it will also be somewhat useful (text mode is a bit
> small in fonts).
No, no - you didn't get my point right. I was talking about cards (or hardware
in general) that are specifically built for winblows - and there are more and
more of those. They implement certain win-only standards and sometimes APIs in
their chips or delegate most of the work to a software driver, which is a
braindamage IMHO. It may well happen that the text mode will disappear
(although I rather doubt it), but that doesn't mean the card will be
Win9x-only.
> > Who said that? Not me! But a VESA is a well defined video interface that
> > encompasses both acceleration and normal features of video chips. Why develop
>
> VESA is fairly poorly suited to the job. Its a last resort idea for
> stupid vendor problems like neomagic. Which is to say it does have its
> uses when you have no alternative except to buy from a sensible vendor.
I must disagree here. VESA clearly defines a set of well designed APIs that
make the hardware abstraction really easy. The most important is that vendors
have certain guidelines that somehow enforce them to implement the hardware in
this or that way, which increases compatibility and eases software
development. What I'm trying to say is that it doesn't make sense to multiply
GOOD solutions (and I consider VESA VBE to be a good one) - it's rather more
appropriate to correct the BAD ones.
> > video mode can be done (on the lowest level) by simply loading registers with
> > appropriate values and in an appropriate order. What remains for the video
>
> Alas not now days. You have write only registers and you have to know whats
> in them to set up other registers and if you get it wrong your video card
> graphics accelerator crashes.
That's right, but you never (well, almost) create video modes dynamically.
They are designed beforehand with all the register values set right - no
matter whether it uses accel or not. All one needs is a simple step-by-step
list in what order to set the regs.
> (Note BTW its arguable that soon not only text mode but all direct frame
> buffer access will go out of fashion. Its an expensive slowing item that
That would be a great thing, true, only one really hard to introduce.
> > > up huge security holes or restrict yourself to dumb framebuffer access.
> > True - especially when I implement a VESA2 and VESA/AF interfaces.
>
> If you can make VESA2 work and work nicely in an Xserver you'll have a lot
> of friends. I wish you well. Trying to mix VESA with direct accesses normally
> results in doom however (and not the game either).
Perhaps, but it is worth trying. The direct access can be avoided by
delegating it to the code of the particular card driver provided by the vendor
(carefully written video hardware access code can be OS-independent) and
allowing the application only to call into the driver do do all I/O - and that
would be fast if the VESA driver were read into the application memory space.
----
"Hello John, have you seen The Standard four hours ago?
They fished a chick out of the Old Father...
Blond hair, blue eyes... She said she would be an actress or something...
Nobody knows what she was planning for, where she was going...
Funny thing she had smile on her face, she was smiling..."
"What a waste!"
-- Fish "Chelsea Monday"
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